Republicans have found yet another way to indirectly have a negative impact on the lives of thousands of minorities, as new reports show that the GOP’s refusal to approve the proposed minimum wage increase is keeping at least 300,000 people of color living in poverty.

Three and a half million people of color would be lifted out of poverty if Congress raised the minimum wage to $10.10, according to a new report from the restaurant workers’ group ROC United.

They would be the majority of the six million people overall who would be lifted out of poverty. People of color are far more likely to work minimum wage jobs, as they represent 42 percent of those earners even though they make up just 32 percent of the workforce.

That big number is in large part thanks to the overrepresentation of people of color in low-wage restaurant industry jobs. Over 500,000 of those lifted out of poverty by a raise in the minimum wage would be restaurant workers, 300,000 of whom would be workers of color.

Restaurants are the single largest employer of people of color, but they are disproportionately concentrated in the lowest paying positions.

As the report notes, “Two of the lowest-paying jobs, dishwashers and fast food preps and cooks, are 59% and 35% people of color, and earn a median wage of $8.78 and $8.85, respectively.” Forty percent of tipped workers — who make an even lower minimum wage of $2.13 — are people of color.
The people of color who hold these jobs are also more likely to live in poverty. They make up more than half of tipped workers and restaurant workers with incomes below the poverty line.

There’s no doubt that the Republican party is hardly interested in improving the lives of minorities, as they continue to prove, but do you think they are to blame for this abundant amount of people of color living in ‘poverty’ by our society’s standards. Or are the people themselves to blame?